


Dedicate Them All To You

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Words are their stock-in-trade.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Dedicate Them All To You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for oxoniensis's LiveJournal Porn Battle, July 2008, prompt: _words_.

Words are their stock-in-trade, language both their servant and their master. The tools of their craft are rhythm and rhetoric, metaphor and metre, irony and idiom, atmosphere, assonance, aphorism and, let us not forget, alliteration. (Casey likes alliteration. That's well-known.) They delight in a deftly-structured sentence, the harmony of an elegantly-turned phrase; rejoice in the thrill of the hunt as they quest down and pinpoint that singular, precise, perfect word that had eluded them, and rest content afterward, secure in the knowledge of a job well done.

They've learned from the masters. For Casey it's Shakespeare, greatest of them all. He'll slide a tape into the player, close his eyes and drift away, letting himself be transported to antique castles in Scotland or Denmark, to love- and war-torn Italy, to enchanted forests and magical islands; he'll waken refreshed, enriched. Dan's inspiration lies closer to home, in the music of Tom Waits and Bob Dylan and the half-forgotten bluesmen who inspired them; in lyrics raw and real that bleed heartfelt truth and the bitterness of experience.

They take these words, hone and refine them through their own worldview and understanding, spill them onto the welcoming blankness of a new page and, every night at eleven, set them free to work what magic they will on the hearts and the minds of the nation.

There are other words, too: secret words whispered (moaned, gasped, panted) in dark places, words meant for no audience but themselves, words more heartfelt and true than any spoken in public: _yes!_ and _now!_ and _oh, god, fuck me_, over and over until their voices are lost to heat and desire, to an animal place where language has no belonging.

And, afterwards, silence.

***


End file.
